Black and white portrait of a person (Cindy Sherman) with long blonde hair and contemplative expression, wearing a dark top, touching their hair with one hand against a neutral background.

Cindy Sherman. Photo: Inez and Vinoodh

 

Cindy Sherman (*1954) is a pivotal figure in the history of appropriation art and one of the world’s best-known contemporary artists. Since the late 1970s, she has been photographing herself in roles inspired by mass-media stereotypes, but also real people and art-historical imagery. Her unique quasi-theatrical approach reveals the degree to which these stereotypes are entrenched in the cultural imagination. Sherman’s influential, complex oeuvre draws upon cinema, realism and the grotesque, and it is embedded in a number of postmodern and feminist theories. The New York-based artist has been associated with the gallery since 1987.

 

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Sherman moved to New York in 1977 and soon began working on a series of black-and-white photographs whose conceptual foundations continue to inform her work to this day. Though her Untitled Film Stills (1977–80)—a now-iconic series showing Sherman herself in various cinema-inspired guises and settings—seemed familiar, they eluded simple explanation. They were not based on specific films or well-known actresses; cracks in the facades of these self-dramatizations revealed their artificiality, and yet these photos still looked like copies. They amounted to an almost encyclopedic list of female roles in Hollywood films, B-movies, film noir and European auteur cinema of the 1950s and 60s. They represented a challenging commentary on the stereotypical, cinema-derived notions of femininity in viewers’ minds.

Her work since then—created in series that amount to self-contained ensembles—has repeatedly highlighted the degree to which the viewer’s gaze is conditioned by various media. Her skillful, often ingenious evocation of such clichés goes hand-in-hand with their undermining. Sherman’s 1981 Centerfolds series features uncomfortable parodies of the centerfolds in erotic men’s magazines. With Headshots (2000–02), she captured the contradictory, often desperate self-presentation of an older generation of women who wage contemporary society’s fixation on youth and beauty as a war on their own bodies. The Society Portraits (2008) series finds Sherman portraying stereotypical upper-class women against opulent digital backgrounds, their makeup and silicone implants betraying an anxious knowledge that they might have lost the battle with images of status, youth, and beauty.

Another essential facet of Sherman’s work is her exploration of the ugly, macabre, and grotesque. Series including Fairy Tales (1985), Sex Pictures (1992), Horror and Surrealist Pictures (1994–96), but also the Old Masters-inspired History Pictures (1998), the Clowns (2004) body of work and her feature film Office Killer (1997), feature eerie and disturbing imagery that revel with surprising force in their nightmarish perspective on the world and carefully illuminate the psychological terrain of the abject. Classical fairy-tale, horror and splatter topoi merge in theatrical tableaux with reflections on the decay of the human body, the history of violence, the AIDS crisis, and beauty-obsessed pop culture.

Though Sherman herself has repeatedly stressed the degree to which her work has been influenced by the ideas and practices of artists such as Hannah Wilke and Eleanor Antin, she also continues and updates a photographic tradition of models assuming a variety of different guises and personae, a history that includes French surrealist Claude Cahun and Bauhaus photographer Gertrud Arndt. And yet Sherman’s oeuvre essentially reduces the photographic genre of the self-portrait to absurdity. She radically examines today’s dynamics of identity-creation and self-display and the constitutive role that photography—with its ability to fuse the imaginary and the real—plays in that dynamic.

 

Cindy Sherman
Untitled Film Stills, 1977–80
Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2019
© Metro Pictures / MoMA, New York 2019

 

Works
Cindy Sherman
Untitled #603, 2019

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #603, 2019
Dye sublimation metal print
215.3 × 195.6 cm | 84 3/4 × 77 inches
228.6 × 208.9 cm | 90 × 82 1/4 inches (framed)

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #584, 2018

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #584, 2018
Dye sublimation metal print
101.9 × 158.8 cm | 40 1/8 × 62 1/2 inches
106.2 × 163 × 5 cm | 41 7/8 × 64 1/8 × 2 inches (framed)

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #559, 2015

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #559, 2015
Three dye sublimation metal prints
120.7 × 266.4 × 5.1 cm | 47 1/2 × 104 7/8 × 2 inches (overall dimensions)

Cindy Sherman
Untitled # 474, 2008

Cindy Sherman
Untitled # 474, 2008
Color photograph
230.5 × 152.4 cm | 90 3/4 × 60 inches
244.5 × 165.7 cm | 96 1/4 × 65 1/4 inches (framed)

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #572, 2016

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #572, 2016
Dye sublimation metal print
132.1 × 116.8 cm | 52 × 46 inches
136.2 × 121 × 4.9 cm | 53 5/8 × 47 5/8 × 2 inches (framed)

Cindy Sherman
Untitled # 549-B / # 549-E, 2010

Cindy Sherman
Untitled # 549-B / # 549-E, 2010
Pigment print on Phototex adhesive fabric
Dimensions variable

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #416, 2004

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #416, 2004
Color photograph
142.2 × 124 cm | 57 1/2 × 50 1/4 inches

Cindy Sherman
Untitled # 360, 2000

Cindy Sherman
Untitled # 360, 2000
Color photograph
76.2 × 50.8 cm | 30 × 20 inches

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #222, 1990

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #222, 1990
Chromogenic color print
152.4 × 111.8 cm | 60 × 44 inches
167.6 × 127 cm | 66 × 50 inches (framed)

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #121, 1983

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #121, 1983
Color photograph
88.9 × 54 cm | 35 × 21 1/4 inches
116 × 82 × 6.5 cm | 45 3/4 × 32 1/4 × 2 5/8 inches (framed)

Cindy Sherman
Untitled # 86, 1981

Cindy Sherman
Untitled # 86, 1981
Color photograph
61 × 121.9 cm | 24 × 48 inches

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #327, 1996

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #327, 1996
Color photograph
148 × 94 cm | 58 1/4 × 37 inches

Cindy Sherman
Untitled Film Still #21, 1978

Cindy Sherman
Untitled Film Still #21, 1978
Gelatin silver print
20.3 × 25.4 cm | 8 × 10 inches

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Details

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #603, 2019
Dye sublimation metal print
215.3 × 195.6 cm | 84 3/4 × 77 inches
228.6 × 208.9 cm | 90 × 82 1/4 inches (framed)

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #603, 2019

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #584, 2018
Dye sublimation metal print
101.9 × 158.8 cm | 40 1/8 × 62 1/2 inches
106.2 × 163 × 5 cm | 41 7/8 × 64 1/8 × 2 inches (framed)

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #584, 2018

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #559, 2015
Three dye sublimation metal prints
120.7 × 266.4 × 5.1 cm | 47 1/2 × 104 7/8 × 2 inches (overall dimensions)

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #559, 2015

Cindy Sherman
Untitled # 474, 2008
Color photograph
230.5 × 152.4 cm | 90 3/4 × 60 inches
244.5 × 165.7 cm | 96 1/4 × 65 1/4 inches (framed)

Cindy Sherman
Untitled # 474, 2008

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #572, 2016
Dye sublimation metal print
132.1 × 116.8 cm | 52 × 46 inches
136.2 × 121 × 4.9 cm | 53 5/8 × 47 5/8 × 2 inches (framed)

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #572, 2016

Cindy Sherman
Untitled # 549-B / # 549-E, 2010
Pigment print on Phototex adhesive fabric
Dimensions variable

Cindy Sherman
Untitled # 549-B / # 549-E, 2010

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #416, 2004
Color photograph
142.2 × 124 cm | 57 1/2 × 50 1/4 inches

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #416, 2004

Cindy Sherman
Untitled # 360, 2000
Color photograph
76.2 × 50.8 cm | 30 × 20 inches

Cindy Sherman
Untitled # 360, 2000

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #222, 1990
Chromogenic color print
152.4 × 111.8 cm | 60 × 44 inches
167.6 × 127 cm | 66 × 50 inches (framed)

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #222, 1990

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #121, 1983
Color photograph
88.9 × 54 cm | 35 × 21 1/4 inches
116 × 82 × 6.5 cm | 45 3/4 × 32 1/4 × 2 5/8 inches (framed)

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #121, 1983

Cindy Sherman
Untitled # 86, 1981
Color photograph
61 × 121.9 cm | 24 × 48 inches

Cindy Sherman
Untitled # 86, 1981

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #327, 1996
Color photograph
148 × 94 cm | 58 1/4 × 37 inches

Cindy Sherman
Untitled #327, 1996

Cindy Sherman
Untitled Film Still #21, 1978
Gelatin silver print
20.3 × 25.4 cm | 8 × 10 inches

Cindy Sherman
Untitled Film Still #21, 1978
Details
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Current and Upcoming
Karen Kilimnik, Corpse, 1993

See It Now
Group Exhibition
Contemporary Art from the Ann and Mel Schaffer Collection
The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs
Through January 4, 2026

See It Now celebrates art and artists brought together by Ann and Mel Schaffer, collectors whose empathy, curiosity, and embrace of our complex humanity, is evident throughout their artworks. The Schaffers are drawn to artworks which describe the messy, rough, and visceral narratives that are bound up with urgent issues of today.

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American Photographs
Group Exhibition
Victoria and Albert Museum – V&A, London
Through May 16, 2027

In 1938, Walker Evans published American Photographs, capturing a country in flux. This display uses his title to examine how photography has documented and shaped the United States. The V&A’s collection of photography from the United States – one of the largest outside North America – reveals the breadth of the country's photographic traditions and the central role of image-making in American life.

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Ed Ruscha, Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962, Artist Book
Exhibitions at Sprüth Magers

Horror
Curated by Jill Mulleady
November 21, 2025–February 14, 2026
Los Angeles

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present Horror, an intergenerational group exhibition curated by Jill Mulleady. In conceiving the exhibition, Mulleady was inspired by the long history of horror in film and literature, as well as by Mike Kelley’s 1993 group exhibition and publication, The Uncanny, a curatorial statement which explored the complex interplay of recognition, memory, and repression. Over thirty years on, Horror takes Kelley’s project as a touchstone, moving beyond the psychological discomfort of the uncanny toward the explicit shock of horror.

With works by Dario Argento, Antonin Artaud, Oliver Bak, Bruce Conner, Mati Diop & Fatima Al Qadiri, Cyprien Gaillard, Jonathan Glazer, Anne Imhof, Arthur Jafa, Asger Jorn, Mike Kelley, Karen Kilimnik, Harmony Korine, Tetsumi Kudo, Mire Lee, Diego Marcon, Tyler Mitchell, Ottessa Moshfegh, Jill Mulleady, Precious Okoyomon, Sondra Perry, Carol Rama, Cindy Sherman, Pol Taburet, Henry Taylor, Paul Thek, Rosemarie Trockel, Andra Ursuta, Kara Walker and Jordan Wolfson.

Cindy Sherman
January 27–April 8, 2017
Berlin

A thirty-five year career in photography has established Cindy Sherman as one of the most influential figures in contemporary art. Since the 1970s, she has created photographic portraits that are predicated on themes of identity, gender and role-play. Parodying the representation of women in film and television, fashion magazines, advertising, and online, she adopts limitless guises that illuminate the performative nature of subjectivity and sexuality.

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Eau de Cologne
Rosemarie Trockel, Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Jenny Holzer / Lady Pink
June 28–August 20, 2016
Los Angeles

The group show Eau de Cologne at Sprüth Magers in Los Angeles features work from the late 1970s to 2016 by Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Cindy Sherman and Rosemarie Trockel. The exhibition at Sprüth Magers’ recently-opened Los Angeles gallery is a follow–up to its predecessor in Berlin last year. It sheds light on key topics in these artists’ works, but also the specific history of the gallery and its connection to these important female figures of an art that subtly addresses women’s roles in very different ways.

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Cindy Sherman
January 12–February 19, 2011
London

For this series Sherman has assembled a cast of uniquely individual characters on large photographic murals, marking a departure within Cindy Sherman’s artistic practice from the format of the framed photograph. The various personas animating this new body of work were created as shrines to nondescript, eccentric characters who might also be seen to denote sentries, guarding the entrance to some fabled land, casting ambiguous and disconcerting glances at the viewer.

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Cindy Sherman
April 16–May 27, 2009
London

The colour photographs assembled are selected from a new series which develops Sherman’s longstanding investigation into notions of gender, beauty and self-fashioning, and reveal a particular concern to probe experiences and representations of aging. Working as her own model for more than 30 years, Sherman has developed an extraordinary relationship with her camera, and her audience, capturing herself in a range of guises and personas which are by turn alarming and amusing, distasteful and poignant. A remarkable performer, subtle distortions of her face and body are captured on camera, leaving the artist unrecognizable as she deftly alters her features, and brazenly manipulates her surroundings.

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Cindy Sherman
February 18–April 18, 2009
Berlin

The fourteen colour photographs assembled develop Sherman’s longstanding investigation into notions of gender, beauty and self-fashioning, and reveal a particular concern to probe experiences and representations of aging. Working as her own model for more than 30 years, Sherman has developed an extraordinary relationship with her camera, and her audience, capturing herself in a range of guises and personas which are by turn alarming and amusing, distasteful and poignant. A remarkable performer, subtle distortions of her face and body are captured on camera, leaving the artist unrecognizable as she deftly alters her features, and brazenly manipulates her surroundings.

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Cindy Sherman
A Play of Selves
May 23–June 14, 2007
London

'A Play of Selves' comprises 72 photographic assemblages which Cindy Sherman cut out of black and white prints in 1975 during her last college year in Buffalo, New York, and marks one of the first uses of herself as a subject in staged photographs. Having originally used the cut-out figures for an animated film ('Doll Clothes,' 1976) she soon realized that the figures could interact with each other. A film script developed, the story of a young woman overwhelmed by various alter-egos working at odds with her and her final conquering of self-doubt, played out in four acts and a finale with 16 separate characters.

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Mondi Possibili
Thea Djordjadze, Peter Fischli David Weiss, Claus Föttinger, Thomas Grünfeld, Jenny Holzer, Stefan Kern, Joseph Kosuth, Louise Lawler, Michail Pirgelis, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Thomas Scheibitz, Andreas Schulze, Cindy Sherman, Rosemarie Trockel, Franz West
January 17–April 7, 2006
Cologne

As part of the PASSAGEN, the supporting programme of the International Furniture Fair in Cologne, at the beginning of the year Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers present a new edition of the exhibition “Mondi Possibili”. The works on display deal with the subject of furniture from a variety of angles: as citation, as homage, as adaptation, or as copy. Others are usable objects that hardly differ from their reference objects in the domain of design or furniture.

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Cindy Sherman
Clowns
January 20–February 26, 2005
Munich

In the clown series, Sherman takes the notion of the mask and the masquerade in a new direction. Initially conceived after being approached by British Vogue magazine to guest edit their fashion section in June 2003, Sherman’s clown portraits would become a way of exploring the boundaries between clothing and costumery. Intrigued by the apparent dichotomy of the clowns’ persona and any sense of the interior, or real self, Sherman explores the society of difference in this subtly disparate group of facades.

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Cindy Sherman
Clowns
November 26, 2004–January 15, 2005
London

In the clown series, Sherman takes the notion of the mask and the masquerade in a new direction. Initially conceived after being approached by British Vogue magazine to guest edit their fashion section in June 2003, Sherman’s clown portraits would become a way of exploring the boundaries between clothing and costumery. Intrigued by the apparent dichotomy of the clowns’ persona and any sense of the interior, or real self, Sherman explores the society of difference in this subtly disparate group of facades.

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Cindy Sherman
June 29–July 31, 2000
Munich

Press

This Artwork Changed My Life: Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled Film Stills”
Artsy, article by Benjamin Sutton, February 4, 2020

Playing to the Camera
Apollo, article by Rachel Wetzler, June 2019

Cindy Sherman: ‘I enjoy doing the really difficult things that people can’t buy’
The Guardian, article by Sean O’Hagan, June 8, 2019

Cindy Sherman review – a lifetime of making herself up
The Guardian, article by Laura Cumming, June 30, 2019

Cindy Sherman: The great American artist
The Gentle Woman, article by Heidi Julavits, Spring/Summer 2019

Die Kunst der ewigen Verwandlung
Berliner Morgenpost, article by Gabriela Walde, January 31, 2017

Cindy Sherman. The Broad
Artforum International, article by Jan Tumlir, November 2016

Cindy Sherman Takes On Aging (Her Own)
The New York Times, article by Blake Gopnik, April 21, 2016

Die Frau mit den Tausend Gesichtern
Zeitmagazine, article by Christoph Amend, September 17, 2015

An Unlikely Conversation with Cindy Sherman
Musée Magazine, interview, June 14, 2012

Biography

Cindy Sherman (*1954 in New Jersey) lives and works in New York. Selected solo exhibitions include Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens (2024), Fotomuseum Antwerp (2024), AroS, Aarhus (2023), Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2021), National Portrait Gallery, London (2019), Fosun Foundation, Shanghai (2018), The Broad, Los Angeles (2016), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (all 2012), Dallas Museum of Art (2013), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (both 2007), Kunsthaus Bregenz, Jeu de Paume, Paris (both 2006) and Serpentine Gallery, London (2003). Selected group exhibitions include Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2025), FOMU Fotomuseum, Antwerp (2024), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Louisiana (2024), Neue National Gallery, Berlin (2023), Leeum – Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2021), Seattle Art Museum, Seattle (2020), Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2019), Hayward Gallery, London (2018), National Portrait Gallery, London, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (both 2017), National Gallery of Art, Washington (2016), Tate Modern, London (2015), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2012) and MUMOK, Vienna (2011). She participated in the 40th, 46th, 54th and 55th Venice Biennale. 

Education
1976 State University College, Buffalo, NY
Awards, Grants and Fellowships
2020 Wolf Prize
2019 Max-Beckmann-Prize
2017 The 100 Most Influential People (Time Magazine)
2016 Praemium Imperiale
2014 Centennial Medal, American Academy in Rome
2012 Roswitha Haftmann Prize
2011 Archives of American Art Medal
2010 Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Arts
2009 National Artist Honoree, The Anderson Ranch Arts Centre
2005 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award Honoree at New Museum of Contemporary Art Annual Benefit Gala
2003 American Academy of Arts and Sciences Award
2002 The National Arts Award
2001 New York State Governor’s Arts Awards
2000 The Hasselblad Foundation
U.S. Art Critics Association
1999 Goslar Kaiserring Prize
1997 Wolfgang-Hahn-Preis (Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig)
1995 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
1993 Larry Aldrich Foundation Award, Connecticut
1989 Skowhegan Medal for Photography, Maine
1983 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship
1977 National Endowment for the Arts
Public Collections
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Art Institute of Chicago
Australian National Gallery, Canberra
Baltimore Museum of Art
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts
Des Moines Art Center
Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin
Israeli Museum, Israel
Kunsthaus, Zurich
Kunsthalle Hamburg
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Louisana Museum, Humlebaek
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal
Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts, Vienna
Museum Folkwang, Essen
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Museum of Contemporary Art, Luxembourg
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Museum of Modern Art, Oslo
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller, Otterlo
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Salomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Sprengel Museum, Hanover
St. Louis Art Museum
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Tamayo Museum, Mexico City
Tate, London
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York